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Chapter10: A stalker in love

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      The interior of her building gave lie to the redevelopment exterior, which had been polished up with white bricks in a fashion of many new buildings. But the inside had all the old bones of traditional tenements, complete with a vestibule and a wall full of brass mail boxes and an inner door that opened with a key or a buzzer. She opened the inner door ahead of me and I pashed into the dark first floor with the apartment for the super on the right and a stairwell leading up to the rest of the building along the left wall. “How far up?” I asked. “It’s apartment seven on the fourth floor,” she said, her eyes twinkling a little under the dim overhead light. “Think of it as seventh heaven.” Someone had tried to maintain the interior, but age oozed out from under the new wall paper and out the cracks of the wooden wainscot that lined the walls even along the sides of the rising stairs. The first step creaked when I put my foot on it and continued to creak as I proceeded Je
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Chapter09 -- A girl's gotta do what she's gotta do

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  She looked different when we got outside, under street lights, gaunter, like a wraith, no more substantial than a ghost, her eyes deeper and darker, and full of mystery, her long fingers pale. Her mouth alone had the same crooked and taunting look as she’d shown in the bar, taunting, as if she was on the verge of saying something mocking, perhaps even hurtful. “Which way?” I asked. She pointed to the left, the light catching a gold ring she wore on the thumb of her right hand. The tall historic water tower loomed out of the darkness like a wraith, caught in the occasional flash of headlights as traffic used the street as a short cut to the tunnel and the highways headed towards western New Jersey. Clusters of stores cluttered the sidewalk on both sides, some better illuminated than others, most on the far side with the temporary feel of hopeful entrepreneurs, while on our side, the more established, older stores – the Chinese takeout, the liquor store, and a cheap bodega – drew in
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Chapter 8: The girl in a cops' bar

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    My phone rang when I got outside. It was Mary. “Are you coming over for supper?” she asked. “Not tonight,” I told her. “Does this mean you have a date?” she asked, hopeful note in her voice. “Not exactly,” I said. “Besides, why would I tell you if I did. You’re my ex-wife.” “Because you need to find someone in your life, Dan.” “So you say,” I said. “I had someone in my life once. It didn’t work out.” “So, I’m to blame?” “I didn’t say that.” “But that’s what you meant.” “What I meant is that I’m no good at those kinds of relationships.” “You need someone, Dan, so you can stop coming here all the time.” “If you don’t want me there, I won’t come.” Mary moaned. “Eventually, Dan, I’m going to find someone else in my life and you won’t be able to come.” “We’ll worry about that when it happens,” I said. “Figure I’ll be over there tomorrow. It’s that’s okay?” “Call first,” she said. “I might be busy.” She hung up. I headed to the library to kill time
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Chapter 7: Jake’s Place

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    I hadn't been to Jake's place since before I left the force it was a dark corner bar with small windows and glass bricks around the front door a cops bar located on the fringes of the bad part of town it was a place where cops went to blow off steam and didn't welcome people who weren't part of the blue brotherhood or people like me who had been expelled before my exile I had spent much too much time here, regular enough for the owner Jake to consider me a friend though not friend enough to discourage me from drinking. Friend or not he was not happy to see me walk through his front door dropping his conversation at the far end of the bar to meet me at the near end and warned me off. “I don’t want any trouble, Dan,” he said. Jake was about 45 but life in a pub had added a lot of Gray so that he looked 20 years older his mustache and beard had gone white with only a brown stain from cigarettes giving color near his lower lip. “I’m not here to make trouble,
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Chapter 5: Hold the presses

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      The newspaper office where Nat worked was not the same one he had started at, an old storefront office filled with the scent of ink and rotting newsprint. The publisher had started the newspaper after con consolidation had destroyed the original hometown publication. The publisher believed people would pick up his paper if he made it more reflective of the town they lived in and he was right. The new paper flourished after a fashion. The son of the founder had brought to the paper his own ideas, making deals with local politicians – much in the same way his father had, giving good news coverage to those who steered advertising his way, bad news for those who didn’t. Only the son was never as savvy as his father, bad deals gave the paper a sour reputation nearly as negative as from the day of Dix’s reign, only nowhere near as profitable. The son was also a cheap son of a bitch, refusing to invest in the technology necessary to let the paper compete in the internet
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Chapter 6: New chief same as the old chief

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      The police chief Nat wrote so scathingly about was never my chief. Police Chief Nelson Rogers became acting chief when my chief got caught taking kickbacks from local restaurants to turn a blind eye to illegal aliens they employed as cooks, waiters and such. He also ran protection for the alien women who got sold off for sex duties at local spas. He also provided protection for the massive gambling trade he knew about and profited from. I never forgave him his transgressions if only because his removal allowed Rogers to rise in the ranks to chief – a man who had been a kiss-ass deputy chief with high hopes and an intense dislike for me while I still was in the department. Rogers took credit for bringing down the former chief, although, in fact, he like many of the lower ranking officers, had padded their own income by shaking down the alien workers, and turned states evidence against the other cops when he himself got busted. He was also savvy in the use of the intern
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Chapter 4 -- Nat's last night

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    Although Rocco did only what was absolutely necessary to maintain the motel, he had spared no expense when installing the surveillance equipment. He knew where the real money was, and I’m sure he kept a library of tapes from those officials who came here supposedly incognito. Yet, in the ever-changing field of technology, even his system was already out of date, recording on CDs and servers that would have made security professionals scoff. For Rocco’s purposes, however, it was more than enough. I had seen some f the camera bubbles at various exterior locations, half globes of dark glass behind which the tell-tale camera lenses hid. No great secret to the more than casual observer, although many of these were tucked away in odd crooks and crannies. How many cameras Rocco had; it was hard to tell. He led me to the rear room off the office, and I saw the banks of TV screens that encircled the small room. “Goddamn it, Rocco,” I said, glancing from screen to screen. “Do
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